1st 5 Pages March Workshop - Moss Rev 1

Name: Michele McCole Moss
Genre: YA Fantasy
Title: The Mythics

Chapter One

Alfy wouldn’t have shot the centaur if she’d known he was helping Bee. But, when she saw him crossing the field with her little sister, his chestnut haunches gleaming in the late afternoon sun, Bee’s head lolled and her body was limp in his arms. Alfy hid inside the shadows of the cabin and silently released an arrow through the window.

She wished she was like the girls who made her want to learn archery in the first place. They didn’t cower while taking down their enemies. But, none of those girls were real. In all the books she’d read, none of those girls fought a centaur.

The flint head and a decent portion of the shaft lodged in the soft place below his shoulder, missing his heart completely. She was still a terrible shot. He bent his head low over her sweet sister, unconscious in his arms. God, she hoped she was just unconscious. Alfy loosed another arrow. It buried itself deep in his abdomen, just missing Bee. Panic ripped through Alfy as she watched him fall. He lifted her sister and curled around her, searching, glassy-eyed, before he collapsed.

They were lying in the grass, clouds of insects disrupted from their business among the stiff golden shoots. Alfy ran to Bee. Her sister, so big for seven, looked tiny tangled up in the arms of the beautiful monster. His carved bow lay in pieces behind him, but Bee was still in one piece. It didn’t make sense. He was a Mythic.

His breath gurgled out of him. Light brown curls haloed his honeyed face. His ridiculously long eyelashes fluttered. Alfy froze.

“Take her,” he said. “She fell.” A spray of blood dotted her sister’s snowy hair as he spoke. His voice was a plucked bass string, low and musical.

Bee yawned like a lazy cat and curled into the centaur’s chest, smearing him with his own blood. Alfy let out a long breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

Carefully, Alfy pulled her sister from his arms, staring at the centaur. Monsters were ugly, vile things. He had no business being that pretty. The end of the world should be dark and disturbing, so why had they made everything so wretchedly beautiful? It was like burying someone you love on a perfect, sunny day. It was wrong.

Chapter Two

MacKenzie Malone needed the beach today of all days. First, it was the one-year anniversary of her father’s death. It also happened to be her sixteenth birthday. She searched the long stretch of sand in front of her. Ever since the Mythics had come, reclaiming the land, there was no trash.

Without the search for bottle caps and chunks of wave-tumbled glass, cans and lost trinkets, her mind was unoccupied. Her mother always joked that there was never a more dangerous time to be around Mac than when her mind ran idle.

Rows of jars, showcasing her collections, hung from wooden shelves in the garage waiting to become part of a sculpture or picture. She’d helped her dad gather the jars, then drilled the lids into the thick wood. Together they’d twisted the containers into the underside of the pine planks manning the back wall. It was the last project they’d done together. He’d always called the garage his workshop, but Mac never saw him do anything but drink and smoke there.

She wanted some comfort, something good. A celebration? No one celebrated much of anything anymore, but she knew if Aedan Malone was still around he’d unearth alcohol from some hidden place and raise a glass to his baby girl. She swiped at her eyes. She wanted, no she needed, her mom. As usual her mother was busy. She knew she was acting like a child, but she didn’t think it was too much to ask to have her mom all to herself today.

Mac longed for the days before the Mythics came when her mother had complained about the dwindling numbers at the library—the patrons, the hours, the budget. Money meant nothing now and knowledge meant everything. No one called her mom Mrs. Malone or Kat or Kathleen anymore. Everyone called her The Librarian.

It was Kat who had reached back into folklore and pulled out solutions for their problems with the Mythics. Iron was key. It repelled the Mythics like insect spray. Under her mother’s instruction their town’s survivors had framed their coastal neighborhood in iron scraps, scavenged from every possible resource. As a result, they’d largely been left alone. In fact, no one had seen a centaur patrol or pixie swarm for months. It felt just as long since Mac had sat with her mom, just the two of them, and had a conversation.

“What should I do dad?” she yelled.

A seagull startled. She shook her head and mashed her knuckles into her temples. The iron didn’t protect the beach. Everyone stayed on the other side of the highway, or what used to be the highway. The humans that were left never came to the beach because they were convinced some monster was going to crawl out of the ocean and eat them. The thought wasn’t without merit, but Mac couldn’t give up the beach. It was still hers.

She knew what her father would say. In his thick brogue he’d tell her to get off her “arse” and practice her art, as he used to call it. Her “art” according to her father wasn’t the projects she made with beach debris, it was all the things she’d learned at the dojo.

Mac jumped to her feet and shook her head to clear it. The auburn strands in her hair glinted like sparks in rich sunlight. Those strands might possibly be the only physical trait she inherited from her mother, a freckled beauty of a woman. Everything on Mac’s lean, sinewy frame, from her pale white skin to her sea glass green eyes were compliments of Aedan Malone.

Knowing she needed to rid herself of some energy, she took off at a sprint so she could focus on her katas later. She loved practicing martial arts on the beach. Her father had signed her up for every class he could. She sampled everything from Judo to Capoeira. Aedan, himself, taught her boxing, but Mac soon learned a good right hook wasn’t a girl’s best defense. She held brownbelts in Japanese Karate and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and was gaining proficiency in Arnis. Then the Mythics came and everything stopped. So she practiced. Constantly.

When she was little she became obsessed with female warriors, in particular the female samurai of Japan. They fought artistically, beautifully at a distance with their long, deadly weapons.

It took Mac a beat to realize why those double-ended swords popped into her mind during her run. Down the beach stood a man, watching her, a long sword at his side, its tip buried in the sand. Before she could think, she was a few short yards from him.

Chapter Three

Alfy paced the floor between Bee and the window, looking anxiously at the centaur still lying in the grass outside. She should probably kill him. She knew where she hit him was painful and an awful way to die for a human. But he’d helped Bee, a little voice inside her argued. She should help him. He’s one of them another voice said. Before the two opposing views could get in an argument, Bee stirred.

“Where’s Phrix?” Bee said.